


And The Universe Said, I Love You

by perhapsaperson



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Existential Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Second Person, me? projecting onto Daniel Jackson yet again? more likely than you think, some philosophical pondering about the nature of personhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26861833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perhapsaperson/pseuds/perhapsaperson
Summary: “I don’t think I’m the same,” you say. He doesn’t understand. “I think I’m made of different atoms now. Different parts than before.”“The atoms are temporary,” he says, with a playful smile and a relaxed tone that somehow calms you. “They’re not the important part.”- - -Daniel experiences the existential angst of dying and coming back to life. Jonas helps.
Relationships: Daniel Jackson/Jonas Quinn
Kudos: 4





	And The Universe Said, I Love You

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in a haze while I was in the midst of my own existential crisis, hope it's coherent to everyone else

_The universe is my soul,  
My soul, the universe. _

\- - 

Who are you?

The question lives in you, it courses through your veins and floods your thoughts, and if you let it, it might consume you. It pushes its way to the forefront of your mind, over and over, no matter how hard you try not to let it. Nothing makes sense, nothing is consistent.

You’re a contradiction; an anomaly. You have been since birth, as everyone is, inherently, immutably. The atoms that make you up have existed for millions or billions of years, and will go on existing after you die, maybe forever. Nothing is ever created or destroyed, fundamentally, or so they say. So physics says. All it does is change its form. Your parts will always be there, but you won’t.

You died. But you’re here now. That’s not supposed to happen, another contradiction. No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to understand yourself. It’s equal parts infuriating, fascinating and terrifying. 

Are you the same, fundamentally, as you were before? Are you made up of the same parts, or are they just new parts assembled in the same order?

“I don’t think I’m the same,” you say. He doesn’t understand. “I think I’m made of different atoms now. Different parts than before.”

“The atoms are temporary,” he says, with a playful smile and a relaxed tone that somehow calms you. “They’re not the important part.”

Which is true, now that you think about it. No one is made of all the same atoms when they’re born as when they die. Are any of them the same? Are any of them a constant part of you, staying with you your whole life? Or are they all just temporary parts of your whole? Does that even matter?

“Does it bother you?” You’re blunt, confusing. You can never seem to fully explain your thoughts on the first try. 

“What?” He asks.

“All the atoms that make you up will still be there, when you die. All the parts still exist, but somehow you don’t.”

“I never thought about it,” he says. Maybe it’s just you.

The physical body isn’t crucial, you know that first hand now. Or, at least you should, according to what they tell you. But you don’t remember existing without a body, and it’s almost hard to imagine how you could. At the same time, though, you feel vaguely disconnected from your own body, it’s hard to conceptualize that it’s really you. Maybe it’s not. You don’t know.

So, what are you? Are you nothing but the information that exists inside of you?

Information degrades. The entropy of the universe is a ceaseless, unchanging force, eventually overwhelming every ordered arrangement. How much of it must be lost before you are no longer you?

The information kept in your memory is gone. Or simply inaccessible, maybe, hopefully. Either way, it’s not a part of you right now. Not a part of who you are.

There’s so much other information contained inside you, though, that’s still there. The information inside your cells, stored in the connections between your neurons, in the arrangement of your atoms. Are you still the same person?

“Am I Daniel Jackson?”

“Who else could you be?”

“I don’t know,” you say, trying not to sound helpless. “What if I’m not him anymore? What if I’m a new person now?”

He stares at you, long and hard. You feel stripped down, feel like he’s staring into your soul.

“You’re still there,” he says. “I can see you. You just don’t know it yet.”

You don’t know what he means, you don’t know if he’s right. But you want to believe him.

Do you even exist? Maybe you don’t. Maybe _you_ are nothing but a collection of disparate parts that’s somehow convinced itself that it constitutes a whole. Maybe you’re nothing more than a series of moments, perceptions, signals, clumsily assembled into what you call a consciousness.

“What are you thinking about?” He asks. You couldn’t tell him. You don’t have the words.

“How do we exist?” Is all you can say.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think anyone does. But I’m glad we do.”

And you smile, because you’re glad too. You’re glad to be here.

There’s something profoundly beautiful about being human. The way you all live, defiant to the improbability of your existence, unexpected and brave and unbelievable and imperfect and breathtaking. The way you find beauty in the vast, indifferent, empty universe, the way you find poetry in the cold, lifeless facts. The way you looked out into the cosmos and saw a reflection of yourselves, and tried to know it. 

The way you go out into an uncaring world and spread yourself out into it, into others, the way you try to make yourselves known. The way you love, and share that love with everything you can fathom.

You’re not alone. Everyone goes through the existential angst of being alive. It’s just another part of being human.

You wake up in the night and it comes crashing into you harshly and unceremoniously. The realization of yourself. You feel like you’ve really come into this body now, your body, and you’re uncomfortably aware of how real it all is.

“Oh god,” you say, because it’s overwhelming and you have to get some of it out. He wakes up next to you.

“I’m real. I’m temporary,” you say. “This body is me. It wasn’t before, but it is now.” It’s just a jarring sequence of disconnected thoughts, no explanation. What’s in your mind is too visceral for cohesive explanation, for flowery words. You just need to say something, to share some of it with the world. Maybe that’ll lessen the burden.

You turn and bury your face in his shoulder, trying to ground yourself in the touch.

“It’s okay,” he whispers.

“I know,” you say. He pulls you close and wraps his arms around you, like he’s trying to take you into himself, to surround you completely. To protect you from everything else. You feel okay here. In this moment, you feel safe.

“Jonas,” you whisper into his shoulder.

“Daniel,” he says. 

You are Daniel Jackson.

You think too much, you sometimes wish your brain would slow down, shut up. You don’t know if this is a consequence of dying, or if this is how you’ve always been. 

But then, there he is, everything beautiful about being human, everything wonderful about existence, all wrapped up in a single person. That same love that humans bring into the world is there inside of him, radiating off of him, into the world, into you.

He smiles at you and you feel a rush in your chest and it’s so raw and tangible that for a moment you know, you know, that this is real.

He kisses you, touches you, and you feel so intensely and deeply that it washes away your doubts about your own reality. Everything feels profound, now, because it’s new, because you’re missing a lifetime of context. But, you think, it could be profound even if you weren’t. 

He’s like a tether, holding you down in reality. This is what you were missing. People. The connections you made with other people are an inherent part of your personhood.

The others, Jack and Sam and Teal’c and all of them, they feel different, but good nonetheless. When they’re with you, seeing you, hearing you, feeling you, it extinguishes your doubts; you are someone, and you belong somewhere. You belong here.

You’re starting to remember them, starting to grasp it. The four of you, you’re entangled, bound together inextricably in ways you’re just starting to understand. There’s something beautiful about that, too. The way people overlap each other, the way personhood is shared.

He’s there too, but not really. He’s on the outside, the periphery, looking in, desperate to belong. He’s not tied to them the same way you are. Maybe he never will be. But he’s tied to them nonetheless, as he’s tied to you. It’s different, but maybe just as good.

“There’s a part of me, in Jack and Sam and Teal’c,” you say. “There’s a part of me in everyone here.”

You’re laying in bed with him, his body pressed up against your side. You turn your head to look at him. He stares back at you, and in his eyes there’s a sea of emotional turmoil, right there, unspoken, beneath the surface. There’s a whole world inside of him, one you can never fully understand.

You reach up and brush your hand against his face. “There’s a part of you inside me, too. Does that mean something?”

He stares at you, with that look on his face, like he can hardly believe you’re here. You feel that too, but probably for different reasons.

“It can mean something if you want it too.”

Which is somehow a better answer than you’ve been able to come up with for all your wandering thoughts. It’s kind of beautiful, and deeply human. But you go on anyway, because there’s still this lingering, desperate fear in the corner of your mind that this is all transient, fleeting, superficial.

“But I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Not really. You can’t ever know someone completely.”

“I know enough,” he says. Simple. You smile.

There’s a whole world outside of you, out in the stars, and between the galaxies, and inside other people. But the world exists relative to you. That’s the only way you know it, through your own thoughts, your own perceptions. The chemicals in your brain, trying to make sense of themselves, and of everything around them. The desperate desire to understand, to find meaning in an apathetic universe.

But, you also exist in relation to the world. That’s the only way you can know you exist. You know you’re a real person because you have consequences, you affect the world around you. Because you impact other people. Existing isn’t a solitary act.

“You make me real,” you say. 

For a moment, the words hang in the silence between you, and you revel in how true they are, how much sense it all makes now.

“Not just you,” you add, reassuring, because he doesn’t carry the entire burden of your personhood; it’s spread out, shared, that’s the point. “With all of you, I exist.”

He frowns. “You exist on your own,” he says.

“No,” you shake your head with a knowing smile. “You don’t exist alone. Existence is relative.”

He just stares at you, uncomprehending. It’s not something you can quite explain, right now, but it’s a feeling that comforts you. It doesn’t matter if he understands everything. He’s here. That’s enough.

He shakes his head. “Daniel, sometimes you don’t make any sense.”

“I know,” you say, smiling. You take his hands. “It’s beautiful, though, isn’t it?”

You stare into his eyes. “That we exist. It would’ve been so easy for us not to. It’s almost a miracle.”

He smiles and pulls you closer. He kisses you, and you feel him. He’s real. You’re real. Here you are, against all odds sharing your existence. Together. 

“Beautiful,” he agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> This might actually be my favourite thing I've even written. I also have a [playlist here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Wl9KpTHDqswdPNjxJcmS3?si=22AKjnuZQMq-an2wdeDPow) that embodies the vibe I was going for with this fic


End file.
